


fuck the word fond

by pandorasbox



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3576987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasbox/pseuds/pandorasbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Like you would know anything about rowdy parties,” he scoffs at her good-naturedly.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“I’ll have you know I was a hoot at all the underground parties,” she replies, in her most prim voice. Nevermind that she went to all of one party in Factory Station and it was just to piss off her mom, mostly. God, she’s the textbook good girl.</i></p><p>  <i>He tries to plaster on his best shit-eating grin, but it kind of loses its punch when his face is covered in green goo.</i></p><p>Or, the one where Clarke's sleep-deprived brain keeps making her think strange things about Bellamy Blake. CODA to 1x08, written for the <a href="http://tumblr.com/tagged/oneyearofthe100">oneyearofthe100 challenge</a> on <a href="http://oneyearofthe100.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fuck the word fond

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to the wonderful [Christie](http://ashxrmillstone.tumblr.com) who helped turn some of the most confusing phrasing I've ever written into something actually readable and is the most wonderful beta ever. And no thanks to [Di](https://twitter.com/thedimishra) who is a bully and yelled at me. A lot. (She's terrible, I'm regretting befriending her, honestly.)
> 
> Enjoy!

After finally calling it a night in the med bay, Clarke is too tired to even contemplate walking to her tent, no matter the tiny distance. It’s been a tiring day, with all the fighting for her and Bellamy’s life, so she ends up sitting on the floor inside the dropship. Rolled up in one of the blankets she found in the bunker, she props her head against the wall and closes her eyes.

 Despite the fatigue, her brain can’t stop working, all the cogs turning and turning and turning. She keeps mulling over her conversation with Finn.

_"I TRUST HIM!"_

_"You can’t be serious."_

_"I am."_

She exhales something akin to a laugh, but she’s so tired it doesn’t have enough force behind it.

Trust.

She trusts Bellamy Blake.

If someone had told her that two weeks ago, she would have laughed and checked their temperature. Surely only a feverish person could ever think Clarke would wind up trusting the self-entitled jackass that had proclaimed himself King of a bunch of delinquents on post-apocalyptic Earth.

But that was two weeks ago. And this is now. Now… she doesn’t even really find herself that surprised by the turn of events, if she’s going to be honest. All the things they’ve been through in the past two weeks, all the loss, hunger, and heartbreak, could easily fill a person’s lifetime. It’s funny how Bellamy ended up being the only constant through all of it, even if that constant went from being a completely polarizing side to… friendship? No, that brings a whole different bag of emotions she’s really not ready to open yet. For now, she thinks of it as a tentative truce, a way to pave the road for their leadership to become more and more solid.

Leaders.

She doesn’t kid herself anymore – they’re _both_ leading this ragtag group of 100 juvenile delinquents – _no, wait, 92? 91?_ She’s lost count in the midst of it all.

Exhaling, she slidesher body further down the wall, trying to get comfortable enough to relax and finally drift off.

She’s almost slipping into unconsciousness when she hears a noise; a small thud like someone just banged their leg against the table in the middle of the dropship. It’s followed by a small intake of breath and a hiss.

Clarke glues her eyes shut, trying to stay still and go unnoticed, so whoever is there doesn’t come bother her. Whatever medical assistance they need doesn’t seem like an emergency and she really just wants to sleep.

But then there’s more rustling, a small thud as something falls on the floor and – “Fuck.” – a low voice cursing.

She’d recognize that annoyed voice anywhere and it only makes her want to sink further into the floor and pretend that she’s not there. After the emotional day they’ve had, she really doesn’t think a late night talk would do either one of them good. Their conversation earlier is probably as much of a heart-to-heart as Bellamy's ever had and she really doesn’t want to push it.

Still, her brain is buzzing with this new awareness of him and she feels like she’ll never be able to rest again if she doesn’t pick him apart to look inside.

She hears him sigh then, like he’s about to give up on whatever he was trying to do. Groaning to herself, she gets up, her body screaming with exhaustion that it really just wants to lie back down.

Luckily, he hasn’t noticed she’s there yet, giving Clarke a little time to gather herself and look at him. He has her back to her, sifting through the medical supplies that are strewn haphazardly across the dropship floor. Standing directly in front of the ship’s entrance, his right side is bathed in moonlight, his left side drenched in darkness and shadows. She rolls her eyes and almost snorts, berating herself for waxing such poetics about him, but luckily manages to catch herself before she makes any noise.

The truth is, she’s always thought he does look oddly like one of those ancient marble statues she learned about in Earth History, all sharp angles and rock like demeanor.

He looks different when he doesn’t know he’s being watched, his way of holding himself completely unlike the front he likes to put up during the day. She sees the sag in his posture and wonders if he’s still thinking about his earlier confession. He leans down tiredly and crouches over something on the floor, taking a beat to put his hands on his face.

She doesn’t hear a sound, so thankfully he doesn’t seem to be crying. He just looks… defeated. Suddenly feeling the weight of the silence in the dropship press into her, she blurts out “Bellamy?”

He stands and whirls around so quickly he seems to blur at the edges.

“Jesus Christ, Princess, you scared the shit out of me.”

Clarke swears she can almost hear the thunderous noise of his heartbeat and something akin to laughter bubbles up inside her suddenly. She catches it before it falls out of her mouth, but can’t shake the fact that she managed to frighten big scary Bellamy Blake and how amusing that sounds to her. _Woah,_ _I must be really sleep deprived,_ she thinks.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Just wondering what you’re doing and when you’ll stop so I can get some shuteye? It’s been a long day,” the last sentence falls from her lips meekly.

Still half-shrouded in darkness, his lips betray the hint of a sardonic smirk at her mention of their ‘long day’. But it seems to be gone in a second, replaced by what seems to be an apologetic expression, if she can tell by the little she sees of his face. She wonders if he’s doing it on purpose, hiding his face from her in the shadows.

“Yeah, sorry, I was trying not to wake you.”

She looks at him quizzically. There’s no way he could have seen her unless he actually went looking for her huddled in the corner, and she knows she didn’t make a sound to alert him to her presence there.

He understands the question in her eyes and sighs, “I’ve been waiting for you to go to your tent so I could come in here, but the last of your patients left like 20 minutes ago and everything seemed quiet so I figured you’d fallen asleep somewhere.”

She doesn’t budge and keeps staring at him, wanting him to go on and just tell her what he’s up to already.

Exasperated with her stubbornness, he grunts.

“Look, you can go back to sleep though, I won’t be long…” He trails off, his hands wildly coming from behind his back and gesturing towards her makeshift bed near the corner. That’s when she finally sees what he has in his hand – one of the bandages her and Monty made a few days earlier.

“Wait, are you hurt?”

She starts to advance slightly towards him but promptly stops when he mutters, “so fucking stubborn,” and then a bit louder, “I’m fine Clarke, just go back to sleep.”

Taking a step back, the moonlight finds the upper part of his face. Clarke hisses when she finally sees what he’s been trying to hide: the gash on his nose is bleeding again and the cuts on his right cheek don’t seem much better.

“You told me you’d taken care of that!” She whisper-yells at him. He hadn’t let her stitch him up earlier, claiming he was fine and that he’d get someone else to do it. _You’ve already done enough for me today, Princess,_ he had said sarcastically, all the while his eyes pleading with her that his ego was already shot to hell enough.

“I did, but these stupid stitches tore loose and now it keeps bleeding.”

She doesn’t know who to berate more, him for being a stubborn idiot or herself for letting him be a stubborn idiot.

Unable to quiet the doctor in her, she sighs and walks up to him, gently taking the bandages from his hand, ignoring the little sparks that erupt on her skin where their fingers graze.

“Just sit down on the cot, Bellamy, so I can take care of those and we can both finally get some sleep.”

Clarke watches him open his mouth like he’s about to protest, but he just silently does what she says and sits down, his hands on his legs. She can feel his steady gaze on her as she moves around the dropship quickly, collecting things from the piles he was sifting through a minute ago. It should unnerve her that he’s quite literally staring at her but she lets the thought go and continues collecting everything she needs to patch him up.

She doesn’t feel him look away, but when she comes back to where he’s sitting, hands filled with bandages, moonshine and ointment, his eyes are pointedly trained on the opposite wall and there’s a slight frown creasing his eyes. The look on his face makes her uneasy, because she can’t quite decipher it, but she doesn’t comment, just clears her throat to catch his attention.

“This is going to sting a little, but I need to clean the wounds again.” She sees his lips quirk up just the slightest bit at what she says, but he still has that frown on his face and he’s still not looking at her.

His mood swings are giving her fucking whiplash.

She stands around awkwardly for a bit, trying to decide where exactly to position herself in order to get to his face -- his legs are slightly open, but standing in between them feels too intimate, especially when they’re all alone and the night is a heavy blanket around them.

In the midst of all her panic, he finally looks at her again, probably sensing her indecisiveness, muttering tiredly, but not unkindly, “I can hear you thinking from over here, just get on with it,” all while spreading his legs a little wider and quirking an eyebrow at her.

 _Well_ , she thinks, _if he’s going to be nonchalant about this then so can I._ She picks up the cleanest rag she can find and douses it in moonshine, promptly stepping into the V of his legs and ignoring the fact that she’s really close to him. Like, _really_ fucking close.

She ignores Bellamy’s tiny intake of breath too, even though in her head she’s feeling smug for not being the only one affected by the proximity.

When she finally looks up she sees he’s gone back to staring at the wall and, for some reason she still can’t pinpoint, it’s making her feel antsy. She ignores the feeling, shoves every hectic thought going through her brain right now aside and goes into doctor mode. Carefully placing her hand on his left cheek so as to not touch any of the cuts, she turns his face towards her to take a better look at it. _Dax really did a number on him_ , she muses, as her eyes scan the entirety of his face, taking it all in. With all the cuts and dried blood she can’t even see most of his freckles anymore.

The silence around them is comfortable while she gently tries to clean all his cuts. His eyes fall shut after a while; he’s a good patient, thankfully, the only sign of discomfort he lets show are his white knuckles from pressing his fingers into his legs so hard. But then she presses the rag on a particularly nasty cut on his nose and he huffs loudly. Except Clarke doesn’t so much hear him hissing as she does feel the breath he lets out, making her aware, once more, of how. fucking. close. they’re. standing. Seriously.

“You could use some better bedside manners, doc.” he spits out, not entirely without malice but still trying to keep his temper under control. She gets it, she really does -- those cuts must hurt like a bitch and dousing them in alcohol definitely isn’t helping, but that doesn’t mean she’ll suddenly feel sorry for him.

“My bedside manners are fucking excellent, you big cry baby.” His eyes flash open at that and he’s about to retort but she cuts him off promptly in her most _I told you so_ voice. “Besides, if you had just let me do this earlier I wouldn’t have to shovel fucking bits of dirt or whatever you’ve managed to get in these cuts out, in the middle of the fucking night.”

She can see that whatever retort he thought he was going to make is lost and they just stand there, staring at each other. But then his eyes crinkle and he’s trying, and failing, to laugh without waking up the entire camp, leaving her staring at him in disbelief.

She tries once more to figure him and his mood swings out, but it’s a losing battle, so she just shakes her head and huffs out a fond laugh of her own.

 _Wait,_ she thinks, _fond? Where did that come from?_

“I’m sorry,” he finally wheezes out, interrupting her thoughts, “but that was the most prissy princess voice I’ve ever heard you make and it was fucking ridiculous.” She snorts.

“I’m pretty sure princesses don’t curse like that, though.”

“Hmm, well, O would tell you a very different story.” She quirks an eyebrow and he shrugs. “Perks of only having me to tell her stories, I guess.”

Clarke smiles a little sadly at that, but does nothing except nod in response. Reconciling the boy she’s been around these past few weeks with the big brother he was to Octavia is… difficult. Even so, she’s seen tiny glimpses of it here and there, both with Octavia and the younger delinquents, and she knows that there’s more to him behind the infuriating mask he likes to put on most of the time.

She suddenly realizes she’s been staring at him for a while, but he’s also staring back at her, so she just clears her throat and powers on without commenting on the awkwardness.

Or, rather, the lack of it, if she wants to get technical.

She doesn’t.

“Ok, there’s only the big cut on your nose left to clean. Can I trust you to buckle up or do I need to go get Miller to pin you down?”

He glares at her, but it lacks real heat behind it, and mutters, “just get on with it.”

True to his word he keeps quiet while she gently brushes his nose with the rag and finishes up. He lets out a breath when she drops the rag on the table next to him, giving him an _all done_ smile. She’s reaching for the bandages when he suddenly starts speaking again.

“So, Unity Day in a couple of days, huh?” She hums in acknowledgment -- she was there with him when the council warned them about the upcoming festivities and how they wanted to celebrate in communion with the 100 -- while starting to cut up the bandages into smaller strips. “I heard Monty and Jasper whispering about moonshine as they were heading into their tent.” He stops and unconsciously rubs his forehead. “Remind me again... how exactly are we going to handle a bunch of teenagers drunk off their asses?”

She stops what she’s doing and stares at him, and then laughs, “honestly, have we been doing anything else other than ‘handling’ a bunch of excited teenagers for the past two weeks?”

“Well... Yeah, ok, you have a point there, but still. The Ark is going to be listening in and I really don’t need their judgement on whatever shenanigans will inevitably happen.”

She finishes cutting the last strip of bandage and then looks up at him, smirking. “Shenanigans?”

He rolls his eyes at her and mumbles, “you know what I mean.”

She smiles at him fondly ( _there’s that word aga- no, forget it._ ) because he’s suddenly very bashful and it’s kind of endearing if she’s going to be honest.

 _I’m not,_ she thinks gruffly _, I’m clearly tired and need to go sleep._ _Anyway, since when have I been fond of Bellamy Blake?_

“Yeah, yeah, I know how these parties can get… rowdy.” She smirks then and waggles her eyebrows at him for good measure, but says nothing else and starts smearing his face with the healing ointment Monty concocted out of some sickly-sweet herbs they found a few days ago.

“Like you would know anything about rowdy parties,” he scoffs at her good-naturedly.

“I’ll have you know I was a hoot at all the underground parties,” she replies, in her most prim voice. Nevermind that she went to all of one party in Factory Station and it was just to piss off her mom, mostly. God, she’s the textbook good girl.

He tries to plaster on his best shit-eating grin, but it kind of loses its punch when his face is covered in green goo.

“Funny, I don’t remember seeing you at any of those _super illicit_ parties.”

She has a blinding flash of memory then, one she had long forgotten about, and she can’t help but suddenly blurt out, “You don’t remember me from the Ark, do you?”

He balks for a second at her abrupt change of topic, but then just quirks an eyebrow at her like she’s suddenly speaking in tongues. But she just stares at him and doesn’t say anything else.

“Are you serious? How could I not?” To make his point come across, possibly because she’s still looking at him with a _very_ dumbfounded expression, he adds sarcastically, “ _Princess_.”

Now it’s her turn to huff and roll her eyes.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, refraining from adding a _you fucking idiot_ at the end. Because, seriously, she’s not dense. She knows she was well-known around the Ark. How could she not be with the family she had? Plus, even if she hadn’t known before, she did now, with the way everyone around camp loved to remind her of it every single day since they reached Earth.

She puts down the little vial of ointment and starts sticking the bandages on his face, remaining silent and choosing to just not steer the conversation where she was thinking of after losing her previous bravado. But it’s Bellamy, and she knows his interest is piqued now so, of course, he doesn’t let it go.

“Well? Mind explaining what you _did_ mean since I’m not a mind reader?”

She stays silent for a few minutes longer, looking everywhere but his eyes as she finishes up with the bandages, but it’s hard to not see his fixed gaze on her, especially when she has to be looking at his face to see what she’s doing.

When she’s done, she quickly retreats from her unfortunately rather comfortable place in-between his legs to tidy up and put away the moonshine, the remaining pieces of bandage and the ointment vial.

Moving around as slowly as possible and deliberately positioning herself with her back to him, she hopes he’ll get the hint and just fucking go. Of course, it’s Bellamy and he’s as stubborn as her, so she’s not really surprised that when she turns back around, it’s to his eyes calmly appraising her and waiting for her to continue. She sighs and deflates, hopping up onto the table right next to him, her shoulder bumping into his along the way.

“Ok, so I may have been exaggerating about all the parties I went to.” He smiles at that, but it’s not even in a mocking way, like she expected. If she’s being honest, that fact alone unsettles her even more.

“I figured.”

“Yeah, well, you try being the ‘Ark’s Princess’, as you’re so fond of calling me.” She cringes at her use of the word fond, because seriously, what is up with her brain? “Not exactly a great way to get invited to all the illegal parties kids had.”

“Clarke, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m really not going to feel bad while you whine about how coming from privilege didn’t get you fun loving friends and nights of sweaty dancing in old Ark rooms.” She flinches back a little at that and thinks, _ouch_. Not that she doesn’t understand why he said it. She agrees even, but damn, he could have toned it down a little. He skates right past it after his comment though and doesn’t let what could be a tense conversation even start. “Anyways, I’m pretty sure that’s not what you wanted to tell me.”

She wrings her hands then and feels self-conscious, because now that she’s thinking about it it’s such a tiny thing and he clearly doesn’t remember. And that’s fine, she’s not really making a big thing out of it, except her reticence in telling him says the contrary and _ugh_. This boy manages to leave her completely torn inside out about the stupidest things and it’s exhausting. Being around him is exhausting.

“Yeah, you’re right, it wasn’t.” He looks at her expectantly, urging her to go on with one hand.

She laughs then, the nerves getting the best of her.

“I’m sorry, this,” she gestures at herself, “this whole flustered blob I somehow turned into in the past couple of minutes is going to sound stupid after I tell you. It’s really not a big deal, it’s just I suddenly remembered it when you mentioned those ‘super illicit parties’. And then you laughed at me and mockingly called me princess, yet again, and I just kind of went into self-protective mode and-” He cuts her off then.

“Clarke, you’re rambling,” he says with an amused expression.

 _I refuses to call it fond,_ she thinks stubbornly, even though she knows that’s exactly what it is. _I refuse, you hear me?_

“Yeah, anyways, the illicit parties. I _did_ go to one of them once. A long time ago, before the Sky Box, before my dad got floated, and before the world stopped being the pink bubble I imagined it was.”

She launches on after that, explaining how she had a stupid fight with her mother that day and was on her way to crash at Wells’ for the night, like she always did when that happened, when she was intercepted by Karen, a girl from her class.

Karen was one of the few girls she actually got along with in her year, possibly the only one that always had a welcoming smile for her and didn’t care who her parents were, at all. She kept babbling on and on about this costume party down on Factory station and how Clarke _had_ to come because they rarely spent time together outside of class and her friend had bailed on her last minute and “It’s going to be so much fun!”

Clarke ended up agreeing just so she could stop Karen from prattling on and on. She honestly worried a lot about how that girl hadn’t fainted yet, she’d always had a knack for speaking a 100 miles an hour and not fucking breathing through her sentences.

“So I went with her, she even got me my own little mask to cover half my face and everything. We got there and it was already packed. Seriously, there were _so_ many people crammed into one little room and dancing together and it was hot but also really humid?” He chuckles at that and she blinks at him and his easy smile. She was so absorbed in her storytelling and her memories she almost forgot he was there, despite the warm presence of his arm against hers. She clears her throat and continues.

“Uh, yeah, anyways, turns out Karen was meeting her boyfriend there. So that’s how I ended up at a Factory station party, all alone, while Karen and her boyfriend ate each others faces off and I awkwardly gawked at everything going on around me like the newbie I was.”

He laughs in earnest now, probably picturing her, and asks, “So you just stood there?”

“At first, yeah. Then I got fed up and started moving around, seeing if there was anything else there but the throng of sweaty people dancing it out on the dance floor.”

“Just say it, you were looking for the booze to get smashed, at that point,” he teases her.

“Hey, you can’t prove anything,” she quips back easily.

She’s getting to the good part now and she hopes he’ll finally remember.

 _It’s not important that he does_ , she tells herself. _Really. Whatever._

“Turns out the booze ended up finding me first, in the form of one very animated, very drunk boy bumping into me and drenching my front with moonshine. I was pissed and all he has to say is”, and then she musters the most deep voice she can and repeats his words, verbatim. _‘Oops, you’ll have to excuse my good friend here.’_

She trails off then and waits for his reaction, studying him as his face goes from amused, to frowning like there’s something at the edge of his memory he can’t quite remember to clapping his hands over his mouth when he does and then he’s just laughing, laughing, laughing.

“Holy shit, I remember now. I said that and pointed to my cup like an idiot, oh my fucking god.”

He keeps on laughing and she can’t help but quietly join in after a while, startled by the stupid crinkles around his eyes. They stay like that until their laughter finally subsides into amused smiles.

“You know, you ruined one of my favourite shirts that night.”

“Yeah well, I distinctively remember waking up the next day with a headache and down one sweatshirt, so I’d say we’re even.”

He bumps his shoulder against her then and she blushes at that, remembering how even in his inebriated state he had actually been pretty nice, apologizing after his stupid joke and then giving her the sweatshirt he had around his waist so she wouldn’t go home smelling like stale moonshine.

“Guess we are.” She can’t even really back down from thinking that the smile she sends his way is fond this time. _Screw it_ , she thinks, _this night, the whole day, really, is already weird as hell anyways._

She yawns then, her body reminding her how taxing the day was and that she really should go to sleep. Both of them should. He seems to catch on and finally moves from his spot on the table.

“Well, guess I’ll leave you to finally get some shuteye.” He puts a hand on her shoulder then and timidly blurts out, “Thanks. For everything.”

She nods, knowing how much he’s trying to put into those three little words and just smiles back reassuringly. He finally walks out, leaving her rooted to the table for a little while more.

When she finally lays back down again in her makeshift bed on the floor, she acknowledges to herself that none of what just happened means they’re best buds now. It doesn’t work that way. By tomorrow they might be butting heads again and screaming at each other about what’s best for camp. But for now she’s content in her belief that Bellamy Blake isn’t the surly bullheaded man he so desperately wants everyone to think he is. And that maybe, just maybe, he’ll let the boy she saw at that party and tonight come out more.

If she dreams of crinkling brown eyes and a fond half-smile that night she shoves the image from her brain as soon as she wakes up.

Seriously, fuck the word fond.

**Author's Note:**

> You can come yell at me on [tumblr](http://clarke-griffin.tumblr.com) about these two nerds, anytime~


End file.
